Shadowy Scáthach

5th Feb 2018

Scáthach (also Sgàthach an Eilean Sgitheanach, Sgathaich, Scatha and Scota) was an ancient warrior queen and teacher of the Red Branch Warriors of Celtic legend. Legend informs us that Scáthach lived around 200 BCE. The name Scáthach means "the shadowy one" and "she who strikes fear". A shadowy phantom queen as is the Morrigan, Scáthach may be a tribal role-title, also as is the Morrigan. Both Scáthach and the Morrigan have deep Celtic-Pictish connections.

The Picts of Caledonia were a tribe of people who inhabited what is today known as Scotland. Ath-Fótla was the name of one of the first Pictish Kingdoms and is another name for the Morrigan. It is very likely then that Scáthach is an ancestral tribal warrior goddess of my tribe who became demonized by the Romans as they invaded Western Europe and were fiercely resisted by the "monstrous terror" of the painted people, the Picts. The name Morrigan means both "phantom queen" and "monstrous terror" (and is a combined construct of Indo-European, Proto-Celtic, Old English, Scandinavian and Old East Slavic root words). Thus, the Shadowy One (Scáthach) also became known as the monstrous terror (the Morrigan).

I am a daughter of the Shadowy One, from the Clan of the Phantom Queen, from a clan of famously fierce warriors. The ancient roots of this matrilineal clan extend far back into remote prehistory, into the mists of time inhabited by Atlantic seaboard old European Atlantic Megalithic Culture (7000-4000 ybp) of Scotland, Wales, Britain, Brittany, Ireland and Ice Age Doggerland. Shamanic forms of the Phantom Shadow Queen include the Human Female, the Raven, the Spiral Snake and the Owl.